OK, I lied. I haven't quite got the hang of it. Sorry for the multiple publishings if you got bored with email announcements! The pictures in the blog are on the small side (so as not to detract from the magnificence of the prose, obviously), so I have added them to the gallery as well. And I've found a way to label them (oooooh!), so if you click on any image in the gallery they will open up in a "camera roll" and you will get further description and erudite commentary (well, commentary anyway - well, a label at least). Oh yeah, I haven't labelled them all yet.
So onto day 4...
Well for a start I can’t keep this pace up on this amount of sleep! Still awake at 4.30am, then 10 minutes later the alarm went off - don’t know who’s idea it was to set an alarm - even for 10am. Urgent need of coffee was satisfied at another excellent local cafe, suitably named LoKal (which presumably means something in Malay?), and I needed everything the board offered.
And this is how Nareesa looked after the sugar rush from her toasted banana bread with goo (not its official name).
We were then treated to a tropical downpour which required a slight change of plan to an indoor morning (or what was left of it), so we moseyed up the the National Museum of Singapore for a couple of hours (it also had coffee). An excellent audio-visual history of Singapore kept us busy for the duration of the downpour - and I learnt, amongst other things, that Singapore was (post colonial crown colony) briefly part of Malaysia in the early 60s but separated in 1965 primarily on the grounds that it could not be the multi-cultural, multi-faith, multi-ethnic country it wanted to be. I like that! I only have the Singaporean side of this story so don't jump down my throat, but apparently Malaysia wanted primacy for Malays and Singapore could not accept that. The result is the independent multi-ethnic modern country it is today, grown to a developed and world power in the space of a few generations, since independence in 1965. I will avoid here too many assumptions about how its democracy works and whether or not there is genuine equality between the various ethnic groups, but certainly from a visitor's perspective Chinese, Malay, Tamil and European citizens appear to live in reasonable harmony. It is a working example of multiculturalism and multi-lingualism (4 official languages). And it's bloody clean!
Right, enough of the politicking - its just that I was impressed with the story of how Singapore became the place it is, and I like writing this blog as if I was just having a discussion down the pub - no verification of facts, just plenty of ill-informed opinion!
So...onto the Gardens by the Bay. What can I say, other than to come over all American - they are AWESOME! The pictures will never do them justice, but it was worth the stop here just to see them.
Bigger pictures, for what they are worth on the Singapore page of the Gallery. Unique is a word often used incorrectly but I think they are, and whoever designed them gets my vote for garden designer of the decade - even over Nareesa!
OK, that will do for today. Feeling dog tired, but not sleepy, so hoping that a better nights sleep will ensue. We are up for a flight to Perth tomorrow - thankfully not too early - and won’t arrive there till late tomorrow evening. Might be a very short blog tomorrow, or I might wait till Adelaide.
Night night all…
PS We found home from home